Converting meshlab structures to URDF How To
Direct coding of URDF files even using Xacro is cumbersome, and even more so as your models grow in complexity. Meshlab is fantastic and cost effective for creating the robot model components (stl) that one would want to put together in an articulated URDF model, however you still have to create the articulations between them manually, which makes for prettier models, but still leaves a tremendous amount of manual effort. Has anyone figured out how to go from Meshlab (freeware) to URDF that they can share here that does not involve having to buy other commercial software? David Lu has a nice tutorial on how to pull this off with non-freeware CAD software. Instead of using Meshlab he uses ProEngineer for the modelling combined with a SimMechanics plug in (also not free) that creates the linkage information. A great first step, however the ROS community would really benefit from a more cost effective open source based solution either using meshlab or some similar open source approach that would not involve having to purchase additional commercial software to bridge the gap between a nice open source GUI modeller such as Meshlab and the end product of a URDF. Hoping some bright person out there has already figured this out and can share their insights. Thanks in advance. -Scott
